SERVICES
How Racket Publishing helps first-time and experienced scribes.
FAST, CHEAP, AND GOOD. PICK ANY TWO OF THE THREE.
Fun Fact
This actually happened …
When Marillion keyboardist and crowdfunding co-inventor Mark Kelly was writing his memior, the title and subtitle eluded him. Racket founder—and huge Marillion fan—Phil Simon suggested Marillion, Misadventures & Marathons: The Life & Times of Mad Jack, and Mark loved it.
Mark sent Phil a signed copy of the book:
But it gets even better. Mark thanked Phil in the book’s written acknowledgements:
#lifehighlight
GHOSTWRITING
You’ve got ideas for a full-length, non-fiction book. The desire? Check. Lamentably, you don’t have the time or experience to take your writing project into the end zone. In the words of the late great Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking is to humans as swimming is to cats; they can do it, but they’d prefer not to.”
Let award-winning author and Racket founder Phil Simon help you publish a quality text of which you will be proud.
Cost: Starting at $50,000 USD.
Developmental Editing
You wrote tens of thousands of words, but readers find your manuscript confusing. There’s no throughline to connect the chapters, ideas, stories, and data in your book. The word morass comes to mind. You realize that a Band-Aid won’t work; it’s time for major freakin’ surgery.
Let Racket help separate the wheat from the chaff in your manuscript.
Cost: Starting at $8,000 USD.
A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
—Thomas Mann
RAPID WRITING
Do you find yourself wasting a great deal of time on manual writing tasks? Does this inefficiency distract you from your flow state and introduce thorny formatting errors into your manuscript?
Odds are that you’re unaware of some useful Microsoft Word hacks. Ditto for some sweet time-saving apps, shortcuts, and websites.
Let self-described geek and Racket founder Phil Simon teach you ways to save hours as you write.
The session lasts one hour, and you can record it.
Cost: $350 USD.
BOOK BRAINSTORMING
Far too many would-be non-fiction authors begin on the wrong foot: their core concept or big idea is flawed, hackneyed, outdated, and/or just plain boring. Let Racket founder and 14-time author help you find a compelling hook. You’ll walk away with the following:
- Detailed personas of your future book’s target audience.
- A title and subtitle that excites you and your prospective readers.
- A 300-word(ish) synopsis of your book that will serve as its north star.
The process typically takes about ten hours.
Cost: $3,5000 USD.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Taking a book from idea to manuscript to finished product is no small endeavor for experienced scribes, let alone newbies. A few missed steps or incomplete tasks can cause a great deal of agita, not to mention many sleepless nights.
Via RacketHub, Racket founder Phil Simon will guide you through the research, writing, editing, and publication processes. Expect to hit your dates and goals and safely land the plane.
Cost: Starting at $4,000 USD.
WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT
LinkedIn, Substack, Instagram, TikTok, podcasts, and their ilk can be valuable properties, but make no mistake: All author platforms begin with their websites—or at least they should. That’s not to say that a writer needs a site with thousands of blog posts and dozens of videos, but launching a book without a proper website is a fool’s errand.
Racket founder and self-described geek Phil Simon has been building and maintaining websites for 15 years. His portfolio includes:
- This site.
- His main site.
- Motion Publishing.
- Michelle Gitlitz 📁(built with Ghost).
- A few other sites that my clients chose not to maintain. I won’t list them here for obvious reasons.
Simon’s preferred tools include WordPress and the Divi visual theme. Divi is powerful, responsive, user-friendly, and visually appealing. With the right hosting, it’s also fast as hell—and about to get even faster.
All site development includes a few hours of customized user training that we can record via Zoom. Bottom line: You’ll be able to maintain your site, add new pages and posts, and the like.
Cost: Starting at $3,000 USD, plus attendant annual hosting and software costs.
BOOK RESCUE
You began your book project with the best of intentions. In hindsight, though, the red flags were clear. You just didn’t see them.
Maybe you ignored the warnings and thought that you could save a few bucks by going with a low-cost subsidy press. Perhaps your well-intentioned friends just can’t do the work of proper editors, designers, and other book professionals.
Regardless of what happened, when, and why, the end result is the same: you’re displeased with the final product.
Let Racket help turn your book into a truly professional product.
Cost: Starting at $8,000 USD.